Jeremy C Kester

Ah, November has come once again to the writing community. That means that scores of writers will be trying their hand at the challenge of NaNoWriMo.

For those of you not hip to it, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. And therein it is the challenge for each writer participating to attempt to write 50,000 words (the typically accepted word count for a novel) in a month’s time. That means 1,667 words a day. It’s a huge undertaking given that most of us are lucky to write a few hundred words a day much less to write every day.

Each year that November rolls around, I’ve either declared that I wasn’t participating, or I half-assed the attempt. Those times I skipped out I wasn’t going to fool myself, I knew that I couldn’t do it. Why attempt something that I was so certain I’d fail at?

Of course that is terrible thinking. Even if I am so certain I’ll fail, why not make the valiant effort? At worst, I fail. But in doing so, I learn. Learning is damn worth a failed effort. Fearing failure is akin to fearing learning. Don’t want to fear learning.

This year I decided I am going to participate. Good, bad, sloppy, whatever. It’ll be a challenge. A learning experience. I am going to do so not expecting success or failure, but I will expect to come out of the month having learned something about my writing process.

Now what am I going to work on? There’s plenty in the queue. From book 2 of Agnes Pyle, to book 6 of Gravity. There’s also Human Decay or LD50, two sci-fi novels in their beginning stages. Or Mazzy, my next YA story already 20,000 words in of a 200,000 word plan. Any of them would work.

What I did decide on was Of Earth and Ice part 2 (and maybe part 3). The novel as a whole will reach near 200,000 words, but the plan has always been to write and release in 5 separate parts, then release the whole together soon after as an omnibus. Part 2 itself is going to reach between 30,000 to 40,000 words, thus why part 3 may come in. Being how I am releasing it, I’ve not done right by not keeping up with it and finishing the story off.

This whole scenario should prove interesting. Especially as I plan to continue blogging, writing Agnes, and writing Gravity. It will just be that the largest focus will be this planned NaNoWriMo work. Wish me luck. I am going to need it.